Nancy has only been allowed to legally drink for a couple of months, but she was an alcoholic for years. When she was 13 she was drinking spirits, at 14 she had a stomach pumped,was put her on a drip, by 16 she was living in a hostel and shoplifting to pay for her addiction.
I used to wake for the morning shaking, and everyday I woke up and the first thing I wanted to do was drink, and that's wine, I thought, that's a very big problem, and I had all my friends and family who were worried about me.
She's now 18 and a mother, and since she's finally sorting herself out, she says that's because she was given a case worker, after she was caught stealing.
He just made me look at what I was doing in a different way, and he introduced me to an alcoholic,and I had a conversation with him. And I just thought that I don't want to end up like that, I want to get out while I can, instead of 20 years time when I've wasted my life away. Binge drinking is becoming an increasing problem. The number picked out by paramedics increased by 32% between 2002 and 2007, 36 children a day are taken to hospital because of alcohol abuse, 28% more girls than boys were treated, the total cost to the ambulance service is 19 million pounds a year.
In some cities like London binge drinking is so common, they put on special booze buses to cope.
We need to be concentrated on life threatening calls like heart attacks, massive RTCS(Road Traffic Accidents), and calls like that. And being called out that people are just purely phenomenon's because of over-indulged is just not acceptable.
Alcohol concern blames drink promotions for the rising number of teenagers asking for help.
If you have 20 pounds to spend and you can buy a lot more alcohol you want, but in another one you go to the bar it sells the cheapest alcohols. So on that basis, we do have a further problem with children, with young people,so they can find the alcohol. Than they woundn't do if alcohol was more expensive.
The agency says Nancy's a proof that young people can turn their lives around, this calling for the price of drinks to be increased with teenagers to be given more support. |